Emap/Opacity Distance

#1 Ok in the mission files you have the fog distance and the visible distance. Are they the ones you have changed?

They are in the sky. And are like this:

visibleDistance = "500";
fogDistance = "300";

Make them somehting like 700 and 600 and you'll see the difference.

And its a good idea to have the fog at least 100 less then the visibleDistance, so you don't see the line of the drawing terrain.

Thats about the only thing I cna think of which says the distance.

#2 Yeah, I changed these before, they don't effect the distance emaps and opacity is faded out. Thanks for trying though. :)

Anyone else have any suggestions?

#3 bump

#4 Just a little clarification: are you talking about the enviroment mapping on player models, on waterblocks...

Just a little confused, sorta thing.

#5 Yeah.

Mainly about player models, not so much water blocks. :)

#6 I believe this should answer your questions:

new WaterBlock(Amazon) {
      position = "-664 -744 26.3327";
      rotation = "1 0 0 0";
      scale = "2048 2048 1";
      liquidType = "Water";
      density = "1";
      viscosity = "5";
      waveMagnitude = "1";
      surfaceTexture = "~/data/water/greenwater";
      surfaceOpacity = "0.8";
      envMapTexture = "~/data/skies/desertsun_7";
      envMapIntensity = "0.01";
      removeWetEdges = "0";
   };

Edit: I just double checked in RW and those dont appear to fade in or out--they just always "are", no matter how high you go. So, I'm a bit confused as to what your problem is. All I can say is to change the surfaceopacity and envmapintensity, above.
--Eric

#7 Just some clarification here:

The waterblock thing doesn't apply to anything else. That is a water block thing.


If you want higher intensity env maps (on models), you have to skin the object correctly. The alpha channel kinda works like the env map channel, if the model says so. So if you make one part of the skin 0 alpha (invisible) it wont be shiny at all, but if you make another part (probably metallic) 100 alpha (solid color here) it will be really shiny.


Fading on distance? I'm not sure. Why is this a problem? Do you have a 500 foot tall env mapped structure or something?

#8 In other words, its another case of too vague of a question begin asked.

--Eric

#9 Ok, I'll try to be more clear....


My Vehicle model has an emap effect and transparent windows. Within a short range, it looks fine.

Walk a little bit away... both the opacity and the emap dissapears. It gradually fades out... but I don't want it too (at least not for a long time).

#10 just a thought, but it might be that the alpha map is mipping out. Is the enviroment map alpha a solid color?

#11 No, I basically copied the rgb data and pasted it into the alpha channel.

I then adjusted the constrast a bit.

However, the windows opacity map IS a solid color.

#12 the opacity map is ignored and the alpha channel of the difuse map is used.

If the alpha channel is not a solid color, it will mip just like the regular textures. It depends on the value on which way it will mip (more alpha-less alpha)

You can test this by inverting the alpha in photshop OR by temporarily setting the shape to no mip using the mip mapping parameters outlined in the docs.

If turning mip maps off solves the problem, then that is where you need to focus your efforts.

#13 We just want the Emaps to be visible at longer distances, at the moment they clip out a fairly short distance.

#14 I'm having the same problem. I have a vehicle model that dispays its environment mapping when the camera is close, but gradually fades the farther away the camera the is from it. After the camera is about 3 meters away from the object, the car displays as if it had no enviroment mapping at all.

#15 Same problem here. Kinda funny how many people in this thread helpfully replied even though they totally didn't understand the problem :). That being: when you have an in-game object with an environment map on it, you can see the environment map when you're close to the object, but not if you back up more than a few meters - the environment map fades out as you back up. So the question is, how do you change this fade distance?

I can't find any reference to this distance in the docs, or in any other thread but this one. Maybe, as Joe suggests, it's a mip problem, but I don't know why that would make the env map disappear entirely.

#16 Same problem: Is there a way to extend the distance of the env map (I have chromed parts on a player model.)

#17 Ps for those after me: I found that if your model has more LOD the env maps extend to farther away

#18 @Andrew: Good find! That was driving me nuts. In my case, I had a player model with no LODs, and the mesh that made up the player had a name ending in the number 145. So I'm guessing that the env map wasn't showing up until the player was 145 pixels on screen or something like that. I changed the number to 15, and the env map showed up a little further away. Maybe that's what you're saying, but it sounded like you were saying the model needed LODs in order for the env map to show, and mine only has the main model.

Thanks for posting this info, very helpful.

-Spencer

#19 0-o LODs are nessecary for environment maps to show at long distances?

#20 No no no no! :)

No, LODs seem to be necessary for ENV maps to show beyond a certain short distance. What Spencer has found is that the distance has something to do with the number at the end of your mesh. I had solved the problem by having proper LODs at 10,50,and 110, but Spencer said he was able to extend the env map distance by just changing his single LOD to 15.

ENV map (chrome) not UV map. - uh.. what the heck? A minute ago this said UV map and I was replying to that.. did it change?